This week is a “recovery”/”tapering” week for me to get ready for the Charlottesville 10 miler on Saturday!! I am pretty nervous about this race! Even though I am just using this 10 miler as another “fun run”/workout to build up to the half ironman, I am still a little nervous about “racing” 10 miles.

This will be my first time racing this distance, and I am not 100% sure how to approach it. I feel like I need to run a bit faster than my half marathon pace…but definitely slower than I’ve been running for the 5k and 4 miler. Plus I don’t want to go too hard and burn myself out–I need to remember that this is just a stepping stone on the way to other things, and I have two more hard weeks of training after the race to get through before I get another recovery week!

I am running the race with a bunch of friends, though, so I am excited (even though I am by far the slowest out of all of them–they all ran Division 1 track and cross country in college;)! More reasons to be nervous, haha!:)
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Well, I hope you didn’t get too excited about my blog post title and think that I am going off on some new life adventure or safari in Africa or something–I just got some new groceries (for new recipes!) and running gear today! But, for me there is not much that is more exciting than new running gear and new recipes!

If you saw my Friday Favorite Running Gear post from a while ago you know that my Moving Comfort Fiona sports bra is one my most prized possessions! My only complaint is that the Fiona is not a racerback, and all of my running tanks are racerbacks, so I really wanted to try the Juno!

Well, of course I couldn’t wait to try it out–so I wore it for my workout today! So far…I am not sure what to think. When I first put on the Fiona it was love at first…wear? I expected the Juno to be made of the same kind of material, but the straps seem to be completely different and a bit stiff, so I am worried they might chafe (although it was fine for the 4 mile run today). It also is kind of hard to get into…haha. It has clasps at the back but you can’t clasp them until you have it on…at which point they are in the back, so that was kind of difficult…and Eric was not home to provide assistance:).

Also, it fits much more snugly than my Fiona, even though it’s the same size. Honestly if I didn’t order it online I might have wanted to return it for another size:/. The plus side of the snug fit–the ladies have never been so still during a run–EVER–haha!

Okay, we are probably getting closer to the TMI zone now so I’ll move on to the other exciting part of my day today: Whole Foods groceries!

I’ve been needing to take a trip to Whole Foods for a while, and when my friend posted this recipe for Pumpkin Gnocchi with Cranberry Walnut Pesto on Facebook yesterday I finally had a really good reason to go!

The nutritional yeast (the bag of off-white flour looking stuff), cranberries, silken tofu, lemon, and thyme are for the pumpkin gnocchi. The flax seeds are partly just because they’re good for you and also because my awesome friend Jessie saw a recipe in a magazine that made her think of me (and was nice enough to scan and email it to me–how sweet is that!?) for a breakfast recipe with flax seeds. And the unsweetened coconut flakes and agave nectar are just items I have been wanting to buy for a while but can’t get at Safeway, where we do our weekly shopping.

I am so excited for new recipes!!

Speaking of food…breakfast this morning was some more cocoa and banana oatmeal eaten at school (to which I again got multiple questions about what in the world I was eating–I might have to stop eating this meal out of the house!). At least today one guy sounded very excited about the recipe–hopefully I spread some cocoa banana oatmeal love today.

Dinner tonight was some delicious turkey chili that Eric made last night (and some Cheez-its!)! For some reason this chili always makes better when Eric makes it–why is that?

I am in looooove with chili! It is actually good for you and so filling! It’s the perfect thing for after a winter run!

When I was a kid I HATED beans and so I never ate chili. Now that I am forcing myself to like beans starting to like beans more I am making up for all the lost years of not eating chili by eating a TON of it! However, I do make Eric swap out one can of kidney beans for a can of black beans because I still don’t like too many kidney beans in my chili (I think kidney are my least favorite beans–ugh!).

Mmmm…chili…..

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What grocery store do you shop at? Are you able to get everything you need at one grocery store or do you shop at two?
-When I used to live right next to a Trader Joe’s I would shop both at Joe’s and the Safeway because I couldn’t always get everything I needed at Trader Joe’s. Now that I am pretty far from a specialty grocery store I usually just stick to Safeway every week–with the occasional Whole Foods or Harris Teeter trip as needed!:)

What is your favorite kind of beans?
-My favorite is black beans! Least favorite–probably kidney. Although I probably have only tried a couple kinds of beans since I am just now starting to eat them:).

Are there foods you used to hate as a child that you like now?
-In the past few years I have started to like a lot of foods that I hated as a child! Some of the ones I can think of off the top of my head are mushrooms, tomatoes, beans, and hummus. On the other hand, I used to love olives as a kid but I think I must have overdosed on them at some point–I will eat them occasionally now but am not a huge fan.

6 Responses to New and Exciting Adventures

My mom and I make regular trips to Costco for our produce and goods. Then we go to our local grocery store for the rest. And black beans are totally the fav! I could eat them all day. Maybe not. But still, they are delicious!

Believe it or not…I used to hate spaghetti sauce as a kid but, I love it now. When I was a kid, I used to LOVE marshmallows with toasted coconut on them, however, after eating a whole bag of them while sitting on the front porch at my Aunt Joey’s house, I got really really really really sick later that night….I will never eat anything covered with coconut again. Bad experience with coconut….